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Title: Confronting His Memories
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham
Fandom: Hannibal
Rating: PG-13
Table: Table 2, 20 in 20 Challenge, tv_universe
Prompt: 12, Alone
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Hannibal Lecter or Will Graham, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***

He'd never been alone in this house before.

It felt strange to be alone here, walking through Hannibal's former home with no calm, cool presence beside him to guide him through.

Will looked around him, feeling strangely impersonal, divorced from his surroundings. So much had happened here, so much that he probably wasn't aware of. He'd had a few small pieces of memory return, but the gaps in his consciousness hadn't all been filled.

How long would it be before that happened? He had no way of knowing. He might never recover all of those memories, and he wasn't sure if he wanted to.

Some of those memories were horribly frightening, and he wasn't sure if he wanted them to come to the surface and bring all of that terror with them, even though he knew he had to have them fixed in his mind to put all of the pieces back together again.

But still, facing those memories would be one of the hardest things he'd ever done. He was afraid to view them, afraid of how they would make him feel.

Will took a deep breath, closing his eyes.

He couldn't let himself be afraid of those memories, couldn't shrink away from them. He had to keep telling himself that Hannibal was now behind bars now.

Hannibal couldn't get to him. That monster had no control over his life now; Hannibal couldn't hurt him any more. There was nothing Hannibal could do to him, nothing that he could whisper into Will's ear that would take over his thoughts.

Oh, he might try, Will told himself. But he wouldn't succeed. The days of Hannibal Lecter being able to pull the wool over his unsuspecting eyes were over.

Being alone in Hannibal's house felt very strange; he kept expecting the other man to show up at any moment, to see that ugly, reptilian face looming out of the shadows next to him. Will shuddered at that thought; he never wanted to see Hannibal again.

He knew that he would see his nemesis eventually. The man who had pretended to be his friend held too many of the answers that Will needed to put the broken pieces of who he was back together; he'd have to talk to Hannibal at some point.

The last thing he wanted to do was to face that grinning death's-head face again, but he had to. He couldn't work out his memories alone.

WIll sighed at the thought, wishing that there was some way he could get those memories to come back into his mind in one piece, so that it would all be there in front of him, with no gaps and no question marks. But that wasn't going to be possible.

No, there was too much that he didn't know, and it might all be far too overwhelming if he had to take it in all at once, in one fell swoop.

He was better off if those memories came back slowly, gradually.

Then, he would be able to go through all of them in his own time, neatly inserting them back into the fabric of who he was, and who he wanted to be.

He wandered through the house, not touching anything, simply looking around and letting the memories of his talks with Hannibal seep in. He wanted to remember more, but those recollections were frustratingly just out of reach, just around the next corner.

If he kept this up, he was only going to get more frustrated. Being in this house wasn't having the requisite effect on his memory that he'd hoped it would.

Will moved towards the front door, then turned to look behind him. He should go into the kitchen; that was where most of the horror in this house lay, now that he knew what Hannibal was and some of the things that he had done. That was what he had to confront.

He shuddered as he slowly turned around, moving towards the kitchen, the scene of so much of the horror from his nightmares, with measured steps.

Maybe it was a good thing that he was alone. So no one would see his fear.

***